IBM Unveils New Financial Incentives to Drive Growth With Business Partners

ARMONK, N.Y., Feb. 28, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced new incentives for its Business Partners to help them deliver the latest technology to their clients and drive growth in key markets such as smarter cities, smarter commerce and social business.

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Advances in technology such as analytics and cloud computing are changing how businesses operate, consumers interact with companies and cities deliver services to their citizens. As businesses and cities look for new ways to improve quality of life and productivity there is a significant opportunity for IBM and its Business Partners to provide new solutions that combine advanced technology with industry expertise.

"Commerce, social business, cloud computing and analytics are all multi-billion dollar industries and we want to ensure that our Business Partners have the resources, skills and support they need to succeed in these markets," said Mark Register, vice president of software business partners, IBM. "These new incentives are designed to help our Business Partners grow their businesses and continue to work with us to deliver simplified approaches to the complex challenges our clients are facing."

The IBM Solution Accelerator incentive is a new channel incentive for selling combined software and systems and/or business solutions.  The incentive has two elements:

• Software and Systems Reward: A 5 percent incremental rebate for selling eligible IBM systems and a 15 percent incremental rebate for selling eligible software together to a single client.
• Business Solutions Reward:  An additional 10 percent rebate for selling a solution aimed at a particular IT challenge on the eligible software content of the solution. The eligible solutions cover client needs such as turning information into insights, managing risk, security and compliance and social business.

In addition, approximately 1 percent in fees can be earned when clients finance their solution through IBM Global Financing.

"Our clients want solutions not piece-parts," said Ernie Yenke, president of Lighthouse Computing Services, an IBM Business Partner. "This new incentive from IBM will help grow our business while delivering solutions that combine hardware, software and business-specific solutions that help address client needs."

Smarter Cities Incentives
Helping cities solve key challenges in urban planning, environmental compliance, energy and water, transportation, education, social welfare and health, public safety, government and agency administration represents a $57 billion market opportunity.* IBM is turning to its Business Partner community to help make integrated solutions accessible to cities globally. To quickly respond to rising citizen demand, IBM is launching incentives for Business Partners including:

• SaaS Referral: Business Partners can take advantage of the new SaaS referral incentive for the Intelligent Operations Center Cloud offering and will be rewarded 15 percent of the annual contract value of the sale.  
• Global Financing: Business Partners working on smarter cities projects that are part of IBM's Software Value Plus Program, can access zero percent, 12-month, interest-free financing from IBM Global Financing.  
• Government & Industry Expertise: Business Partners can take advantage of additional earning opportunities through IBM's Industry and Capability authorization incentives for on premise use of the Intelligent Operations Center.

Smarter Commerce and Social Business Incentives   
IBM's Smarter Commerce initiative is redefining the way businesses are engaging with today's empowered consumer. At an estimated $20 billion opportunity** for software alone, IBM is enabling eligible Business Partners to sell SaaS solutions for Smarter Commerce to their clients with IBM and obtain 15 percent of the annual contract value. The goal of the Smarter Commerce Saas Incentive Program is to accelerate cloud adoption by encouraging new business models, such as cloud services solution providers, to incorporate SaaS capabilities for Smarter Commerce into their solutions. 

Products offered through this incentive include Smarter Commerce Industry solutions SaaS products such as IBM Coremetrics, Sterling Commerce and Unica. The Smarter Commerce Saas Incentive Program will be available to eligible IBM Business Partners including partners of recently acquired companies such as DemandTec.

Additionally, IBM is announcing new incentives to help Business Partners capitalize on the growing social business market opportunity. According to Forrester Research, the market for social enterprise apps and related services will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 61 percent to become a $6.4 billion market in 2016.*** Now, qualified IBM Business Partners selling SaaS offerings to small or mid-sized companies can earn a 28 percent rebate when they sell IBM SmartCloud for Social Business.

The IBM Solution Accelerator incentive and Social Business incentives are available now. The Smarter Commerce and Smarter Cities incentives are expected to be available in the Second Quarter of this year.

Some incentive components are not available in certain countries. Other restrictions may apply. Offerings are subject to change, extension or withdrawal without notice.

For more information: www.ibm.com/PartnerWorld

For more information: http://www.ibm.com/press/us/en/presskit/36796.wss

* Analyst firm IDC estimates that the new Smarter Cities information technology market opportunity at $34 billion in 2011, increasing more than 18 percent per year to $57 billion by 2014.
** IBM Market Insight data
***Social Enterprise Apps Redefine Collaboration, Forrester Research, Inc., November 30, 2011.

Contact:
Erica Topolski
IBM Media Relations
[email protected]
+1 617 693 2816

SOURCE IBM